It’s the end of the year, so between filling their bellies with roast turkey and figgy pudding and the inevitable hangover that follows New Year and Hogmanay the boys gather to look back at the best board, card and tabletop games of 2016.

Tell us what your Game of 2016 was over at our forum or in the comments below.

You would think with a name like Tudor I would have a greater interest
in history. Apart from a half-baked attempt at finding out if I am a
descendant of the most famous family in UK history I really do not know
much about my country's past. As a point of reference, History is the
only class in school I got told off in, and I was a proper nerdy swot.
So the game Timeline presents an interesting challenge for me.

Star Wars has some pretty iconic imagery. X-Wings, TIE Fighters, AT-ATs and men in their pyjamas waving glowing swords are all distinctive images that when you see you immediately know you are in a Galaxy far far away.

But do you know your X-Wing from your Y-Wing? Can you spot the difference between Count Dooku and Anakin Skywalker? And, more importantly, can you do this before anyone else?

I should preface this review by saying I love the Arkham Horror series
of games from Fantasy Flight Games. Arkham Horror is up there as one of
my favourite games of all time. I love the way it blends the works of H P
Lovecraft, filtered through the Call of Cthulhu RPG, with a heavily
thematic and punishingly difficult cooperative experience. So far every
game in the series (with the exception of the now defunct Call of
Cthulhu card game) have managed to deliver on that base concept, whilst
still bringing something different to the table.

At the same
time I am losing faith with the LCG or Living Card Game concept, the
system requires a dedication both from a financial standpoint and
finding players who will share that path with you.

And so my
anticipation is high. Can Arkham Horror: The Card Game replicate the
theme, cooperation and impending sense of doom into their Living Card
Game range or does it get bogged down in a distribution method that I
feel at odds with? The answer is that Arkham Horror: The Card Game is
exactly what I was expecting, in both good and bad ways.

Welcome listeners of illusion to the podcast of confusion. We, Polyhedron Collider, challenge you to the ultimate adventure. The next episode of the podcast is complete, the entrance to the dungeon is open so enter, listener.

The Polyhedron Collider Crew party up and head into the dungeon adventure that is the world of board games, card games, roleplaying games and tabletop gaming. Andy tells us about his experience of Knightmare Live, Steve and Andy explore the kickstarted world of Legends Untold before escaping the locals of Innsmouth in Mansions of Madness and Jon takes us through Dobble Star Wars.

We also delve into the mailbag and talk about our pet peeves in gaming, rulebooks and augmented reality and VR.

Those with long memories may remember an interview we did a little while back regarding Ether Wars,
a dice rolling area control game from Spain. You also may remember we
also did a couple of interviews with Burning Games, also from Spain,
regarding their card based RPG Faith.

Well Ether Wars didn’t do
very well first time around but the developers have teamed up with their
fellow countrymen to come bring back the sci-fi dice game to
Kickstarter.

I had a little chat with the development team regarding how to do a Kickstarter the second time around.

Update: According to details in December's White Dwarf (told to us by eagle eye Google+ follower Alun Heseltine), The new Space Hulk will be released on 3rd December and retail for £75.

Original Article: Did you get rid of your old original Space Hulk? Did you fail to catch the limited 3rd edition version of Space Hulk back in 2009? Did you fail to catch the reprint of the other limited edition in 2014? Well never fear, because Space Hulk is coming back. Again.

Are you a Euro gamer? Are you a player who hates randomness, deplores
direct conflict and wants your victory to be based solely on your
strategy and how you best used the resources available to you?

If
any of these things applies to you stop reading now, because Ominoes
isn't for you. Seriously, come back in a few weeks when Andy has written
his Ava Roma review because that's going to be your game, Ominoes is
not.

Welcome adventurer. Are you ready to enter the Dungeon? Are you true of
heart? Strong of arm? Mindful of your surroundings and equipped for
whatever the ancient caverns can throw at you? Because if you want to
enter the worlds of Legends Untold you will have to be all of these
things.

Legends Untold attempts to recreate the classic dungeon
crawl; gather a party, tool up and head into the dark uncharted depths
in search of riches, glory and most likely a grisly death. What makes
Legends Untold stand apart from the plethora of miniature games and RPGs
is that Legends Untold is played out entirely with cards and builds a
sprawling dungeon map as you play.

I’ve never seen one before, no one has, but I’m guessing it’s the Polyhedron Collider Cast Episode 14. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A black hole sucks time and matter out of the universe, the Polyhedron Collider Cast ejects tabletop gaming chat back into the universe.

You’re a young teenager in the mid to late
80’s with a sense of adventure and a TV company asks for volunteers to
star in a new show where you and 3 mates can wander round a dungeon
trying to solve its puzzles. You squeal at your mates, write into the
show and get rejected because your sense of fashion extended beyond a
set of tartan shorts, pastel coloured polo t-shirt and more spots on
your face than residents of a quarantine ward after a particularly
virulent outbreak of smallpox.

But enough about my formative years.

For
those bespectacled nerds that did manage to wangle a go on one of the
world’s first VR suites, complete with primitive 3D rendered Level 5
Wall Monsters, ropey actors contending with contestants who couldn’t
solve a puzzle if it had the solution emblazoned in neon lettering on
the far wall and a presenter who had such disdain for his contestants,
he openly mocked them as they flailed around failing to solve the
aforementioned puzzle. So, for anyone alive and under the age of 18 in
the 80s and 90s, Knightmare proved to be essential viewing and probably
started me on my path of screaming at TV contestants who showed less
initiative than a tranquilised hippy after drinking 6 bottles of
Buckfast.

Moonstone is a tabletop miniatures skirmish games for 2 to 4 players that takes its visual styling from a particular David Bowie film and incorporates an interesting bluffing mechanic. I spoke to Richi Paskell Goblin King Games about Moonstone, which is on Kickstarter now.

Just in time to miss Halloween, the boys return for the Polyhedron Collider Cast Episode 13. We recount our time at AireCon 2016 where we played a whole host of games and took part in our first media panel.

As some of you may know, I’m a scientist. If I’m honest, more like Peter Venkman than Stephen Hawking, but a scientist nonetheless. Whilst knowing things about the universe is pretty groovy, with this great responsibility comes the inevitable burden of encountering people who are, even being generous, morons. Not because they’re horrible or mean, but because they believe in fairy stories, magic, homeopathy being an effective remedy for their trench foot and the existence of ghosts. Admittedly, if ghosts did exist, that would be pretty cool, but as it stands, a few dodgy photos of a fuzzy figure in bad lighting and various testimonies of swamp-dwelling hicks claiming they saw something scary in a conveniently spooky place is hardly compelling evidence.

We’ve just spent the weekend at AireCon, a gaming convention in Bradford UK. Together with Jay from Breacher18, Luke from the Broken Meeple and Rob from the Cult of the New Podcast we took part in a podcasters panel titled Five Games I Hate But Everyone Else Loves.
Will we hate your favourite game? Does Jon actually hate anything? Is Jay going to punch Luke? All will be revealed.

Steve is joined by Richard Denning, designer at Medusa Games and one of the people instrumental to the UK Games Expo. Richard chats about his newest game, Nine Worlds, an abstract area control game themed around the nine worlds of Norse mythology. He also talks to us about the UK Games Expo, its history and what it’s like to be responsible for such a large gaming event.

I keep meaning to try Guild Ball. Everyone says I will love the
combination of skirmish miniatures game and proper Football – none of
this hand egg stuff.

But I’ve had two problems.

I was going to try the
game at Salute, but kind of got distracted by Dark Souls, if your
meaning of distracted is screaming like a teenage girl at a Justin
Bieber concert. The other problem is where do I start? Most miniature
games can be a bit impervious to the casual gamer; you need a
beautifully rendered table top, some miniatures, a rulebook and then all
manner of tokens, counters and templates.

Update: Beer Empire has relaunched on Kickstarter and can be found here.

Original Article: It’s a well-established fact that here at Polyhedron Collider, we like
our beer. In fact, “like” is an understatement, akin to suggesting that
Donald Trump might have a few controversial skeletons in his closet. We
enjoy our beer so much that Steve makes better beer than some of the
more popular breweries – believe me, his wedding porter was like
drinking a bar of Galaxy rinsed with burning malt. In fact, why he’s not
making more right this second is a matter I will raise at the next
Polyhedron Collider AGM under “A.O.B.” (Any Other Beer).

I’m never sure whether you should feed a fever or starve it. While Essen fever is reaching new heights why not feed it with our interview with Paul Grogan from Czech Games Edition and Gaming Rules about the hot new Alchemists expansion, The King’s Golem.

Many thanks to Chris from the UK Gaming Media Network for the recording and for Playmore Games and Dized for the use of their booth.

I'm sorry to say that none of the Polyhedron Collider crew will be attending Essen this year. Jon isn’t allowed out at weekends without supervision, Andy is off to Islay for a whisky distillery tour and Steve has to buy a washing machine, but that doesn't mean we can't get excited about the new games and generally geeky goodness surrounding Europe's largest tabletop gaming convention and arguably the largest board game convention in the world.

With over 700 games being shown off at the event there's a lot to take in, so here is a handful that have caught our eye. So if you're heading to Essen this weekend go check these games out and let the publishers know that Polyhedron Collider sent you.

We're a bit late posting this on our site, but with just a day to Essen Spiel 2016 the excitement for Adrenaline, the first person shooter inspired Euro game from CGE, is rising. At the UK Games Expo 2016 Steve got to chat with Paul Grogan about the game and its interesting concepts.

Many thanks to Chris from the UK Gaming Media Network for the recording and for Playmore Games and Dized for the use of their booth.

Jon is back for another dose of board game review and chat as we look at some new games and some upcoming Kickstarters. First off Steve and Jon try to save the world from otherworldly beings in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, Steve and Andy become otherworldly godlike beings in True Messiah and we all become brewers in Boar & Dice’s new Kickstarter Beer Empire.

Update: Due to a legal dispute, this game is no longer called Battle of the Bands and is now called Band Manager: Backstage Clash.

Original Article: I used to be in a band, in fact during my formative years I've been in a number of bands and all but one of them were pretty rubbish. I may be a competent bass player but Wherewithal did a lot better once I left. So when I talk about Band Manager: Backstage Clash, a new card game that's on Kickstarter now, I feel like I've been there. I've had the chops, I've practised till my ears ring, I’ve spent too much money on a new guitar and I’ve stared out over an audience of bored looking punters.

In the UK we’re a bit short on gaming conventions. It’s true we have the UK Games Expo but what are us gamers to do the other 51 weekends of the year. Don’t fear though as AireCon is here and willing to plug that gap with two days of gaming goodness.

AireCon is a table top gaming festival on the 22nd and 23rd October in Bradford. There will be board games, RPGs, card games and war games, but more importantly there will be loads of people to play all these juicy games with.

As a board game community we are obviously very pessimistic about the
future as we are constantly playing games about the end of the world.
Whether it's zombies, nuclear attack or the mysteriously named 'the
event' (please remain indoors) we all seem to be convinced that
civilisation as we know it is about to end and we're all going to be
scratching for survival in a nightmare future. The Pioneers Program
from GCT Studios treads this familiar scorched ground as you attempt to
build a settlement and attract notable personalities to your cause.

One of the best things I did at university, besides drinking heavily and fraternising with my fellow students, was the decision to study Astrophysics. Yes, for a small part of my life I could look at the heavens on a clear night and actually know which point of light was which. Notwithstanding the fact that such nights in a coastal town in eastern Scotland were cold enough to freeze the hairy spheres from a number of particularly whimsical brass monkeys, these were good times and the culmination of a youth spent watching a lot of Star Trek, wondering what it will be like if we, as a slightly more evolved collection of the aforementioned monkeys, were ever to get to the stars.
The naive optimists amongst you may think that we’ll transcend war, poverty and generally being unpleasant to each other in favour of some kind of hippie Utopia where everyone is equal and all the bad things have gone from society. The more realistic (or cynical in my case) of you will probably think that, whilst all that flowery thinking is good in principle, it’s got about the same chance of happening as I have attracting Christina Hendricks to be the mother of my future children. That being the case, if we do manage to survive the next few years of Donald Trump, Brexit, the reduction of choice in the Sainsbury’s lunch deal range and finally get beyond the little blue space marble we call home, then Eclipse: New Dawn for the Galaxy is probably a fair representation of what things may be like.

Whilst not the freshest game to be covered by our beady eyes here at Polyhedron Collider, Eclipse stands out for me as a very good example of a 4X game manifested in tabletop form. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, 4X stands for “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate” and that tells you pretty much what you need to know about the premise of Eclipse. If any of you have played Sins of a Solar Empire or Civilisation on the PC, you’ll have a fair idea of what’s involved. Start with a small patch of space, blindly stumble around trying to find stuff, start a fight or two then crush your enemies with superior firepower. Or play nice and see how far that gets you.

Eclipse is not what you’d call a lightweight game. In fact it’s probably fairer to say it’s heavier than a Blue Whale that’s discovered how to get Dominos to deliver plankton pizza. It’s got quite literally thousands of counters and playing pieces and as a result, is a bit of a mission to set up. Eclipse currently has three major expansions, but I’m concentrating on the base game in this review. Some of the photos include items from Ship Pack One, which is basically a miniatures pack for the base alien species. There’s a bunch of human factions together with a wide variety of alien species each possessing their own talents. These abilities can affect the way each species conducts research, explores, upgrades and so on, so there’s a lot to experiment with right there. Eclipse plays up to 6 people, which is expanded to a whopping 9 with Rise of the Ancients.

Despite the size and heft of the game, Eclipse is actually remarkably streamlined to play. The hex-tiled map is unknown from the outset beyond each player’s patch of space and the Galactic Core. There’s three concentric “rings” that form the galaxy, with the players start positions in the second ring out allowing them to explore towards the core where there are more resources and more chance of Ancient Aliens, or outwards to relative safety, but fewer resources.

Ultimately, the aim of the game is to acquire Victory Points which can be achieved in a few ways, allowing a huge number of possible approaches to the game; another aspect I really love. VPs are awarded either through combat, research, territory control or exploration. You’ll probably find a mixture of all four is required, but finding the sweet spot is the key and depending on what your opponents do, you may find your strategy changes midway through.

The underlying resources of the game are Money, Science and Materials – the latter two support research and ship building respectively. Resources are acquired by the placement of population cubes onto planets – three types for the three resources – so you need to expand to support your empires demands and generate more resource so you can expand further. A nice, self-regulating runaway process.

Players have a limited number of influence discs that represent the actions that they wish to take, not unlike a worker placement mechanic. Actions that can be taken are Explore (uncover new hexes), Research (buy available technology), Move (navigate units around the map), Upgrade (add/remove tech to/from ships), Influence (shift control of hexes) or Build (construct ships). Using discs costs money; your empire will generate a limited amount of money each turn so there’s a balance to be made between what you generate and what you spend, thus providing a natural limit to the number of actions a player can make in a turn.

You’re free to take as many actions as you have disks, but run out of money at the end of the turn and your empire will collapse faster than a Middle Eastern peace negotiation. On top of that, you need a disk to represent control of a hex, so the bigger your empire, the more it costs you to run it. I love this mechanic as it imposes a natural size and scope to player domains. Some tech adds more disks which gives you more actions and adds something for the fans of efficient bureaucracy amongst you.

There are a lot of technologies in the game, but you can’t use them until you’ve invested in the necessary research. Research is quite a straightforward process – spend your science budget on a tech you want and add it to your board. Do enough research and you’ll start to earn VPs. There isn’t a tech tree as such, but more powerful tech costs more Science so you’ll have to save up a while for the really meaty stuff, unless your empire is comprised of some kind of enterprising nerd population and produces more Science than the Large Hadron Collider on amphetamines. An occasional issue here is the tech available is randomly drawn at the start of each turn – it adds a nice level of competition, but it can mean that some tech may not be available until later in the game when it may be less beneficial or only one instance comes out, bought by a single player which then makes them far too powerful.

Speaking of power, combat is inevitable and dice-based. To put it succinctly, roll dice for each weapon (ships can have more than one) involved in that round of combat, add or subtract modifiers, choose your targets then remove them from the hex if you’ve battered them enough. Different weapons do different levels of damage, can use multiple dice and bigger guns mean more damage so it’s in your interest to upgrade your ships. There’s a lot of dice bundled with the game and they’re conveniently coloured, which makes tracking which weapon does what much easier, but rather bizarrely I found there still weren’t enough. Perhaps that’s a reflection of my aggressive and warlike nature, but it’s a bit of an inconvenience in multiple-combatant scenarios.

I’ve heard comments suggesting that the combat is a bit too random, which being dice based is bound to be the case, but I quite like the idea and I think it’s a reflection of chaotic space combat. After all, Luke Skywalker took down the Death Star in a Reliant Robin with wings so anything is possible. The only drag on the combat is sometimes the sheer number of ships that are involved is too many for the particular hex especially with Ship Pack One’s larger models – although Eclipse does alleviate that by including some “crowded hex tiles” to provide more space.

Don’t expect to have a quick blast through the game – the box says 30 mins per player, for seasoned players that may be the case, but double it and you’re getting close for most folk. There’s also the setup and pack up time, which isn’t insignificant, so for a 4 player game, you’re looking at about 5 hours. The game will start pretty fast but you’ll find that, despite Douglas Adams insisting that space is very big, it’ll run out very quickly in Eclipse especially with 6 players. It all gets a bit cosy and fisticuffs are just a hex away.

In case it’s not obvious, I like Eclipse; I like it a lot. It (and its plethora of expansions) takes pride of place in my gaming cupboard because I just love the way it feels, looks and plays. It’s a very well thought out game despite a slight imbalance in a couple of the combat technologies – one’s too cheap and another is too powerful. Plus for what you get in the box for the money, like the average Jeremy Kyle viewer, it’s a no-brainer.

So it turns out if Eclipse’s vision of the future is correct, there’s room for both philosophies – you can sit in your corner of the galaxy, reading books, braiding hair and subsisting on organic, free range quinoa or you can expand rapidly, consume every natural resource you lay your hands on and subdue anything that stands in the way. Strike a balance and you may be onto a winner.

It's the future and those crazy scientists have been at it again. This
time they've made a device called the Belief Engine, that has made
spiritual belief become manifest. God-like personalities have risen to
power, fuelled on the prayer of their followers while the world around
them has become a wasteland. Of course it's not long before these
god-beings become too big for their britches and everything kicks off.
That of course is where we start our journey into the nightmarish world
of True Messiah; a 2 to 4 player game of resource management, deck
building and swarming your enemies with hordes of faithful followers.

It's 16th Century Genoa, and like Katie Price and the Kardashians are
fully aware, nothing grabs wealth and power like a good wedding. You
might not having the marketing power of Hello magazine behind you but in
Brides & Bribes you will gain power (and most importantly victory
points) by marrying your eligible bachelor sons to the daughters of the
most powerful families in the city.

Marrying off your sons isn't
the only way to win in Brides & Bribes, you can also build up your
manor and gain favour with the local barons, but it is the backbone of
the game. You'll send off your sons and servants in their little wooden
coach meeples (that look awesome by the way) to various locations on the
board hoping to gain favour with the local Lord.

Saddened by the demise of the partnership between Fantasy Flight Games and Games Workshop, Jon takes some time away from the podcast to mourn the loss of Talisman. In his absence Andy and Steve discuss what effect the split will have and what will happen to our favourite Warhammer board games.

We also discuss two new Kickstarters, No Honor Among Thieves and Brides and Bribes and answer a round of questions from the mail bag.

A lot of new games were announced by Fantasy Flight Games at Gen Con, so
many in fact my credit card company is rubbing its hands with glee at
the prospect of the number of games I will be buying over the coming
months. However there was one glaring omission, and one surprise
announcement. For now let’s concentrate on the omission; no new board
games based on Games Workshop licences were announced. No Warhammer. No
40k. No new Talisman expansions. Not even news about the continued
releases for Warhammer 40,000 Conquest.

Whether you're a rogue in Dungeons and Dragons, an avid reader of
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn or spent so long playing Thief: The Dark
Project that you instinctively move into the shadows when walking across
town, the image of the fantasy thief is an enduring one. Many of these
tales will talk of the honourable thief, or the thieves’ guild, living
by a code and sticking together. Unfortunately, I'm here to tell you
that there is no honour among thieves because the lure of gold makes an
uneasy alliance.

The boys are joined by James Gantry from Rogue Blade Games as we talk all things roleplaying game. First we talk to Jay about his new RPG The Chronicles of Aerthe, which is Kickstarting right now.

We then have an in depth discussion about our recent return to roleplaying with our thoughts on Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. We also discuss some RPG accessories starting with Loaded Dice, a set of drinking glasses form Screech Dragon Studios and then discuss Syrinscape and music in your roleplaying game sessions.

Picture the scene; it's the middle of both a post-apocalyptic zombie
invasion and the worst winter in recorded history, you're running low on
everything from food to medicine and you come across a horse. A horse
would be very useful for getting around town quickly, it's a majestic
beast and for one to have survived this far into a zombie outbreak means
it's a fighter, but it also represents a significant quantity of fresh
protein and there's plenty of starving mouths to feed back at the
colony. So what do you do?

In a bonus episode, the boys discuss the games that were announced and released at Gen Con 2016, the world’s largest tabletop gaming convention.

Unfortunately, three cash strapped British chaps couldn’t make it to the Indianapolis convention and they spoke to someone who did, special guest Paul Grogan of Gaming Rules and Czech Game Edition (CGE).

It’s probably pretty obvious to you that, as the writer of board game reviews, I consider myself to be a bit of a geek. Others consider me to be quite a lot of a geek, although that’s the polite ones. I won’t mention what the others call me; Polyhedron Collider would probably ask me to stop writing. The point is, as a geek I have pale skin, don’t like daylight and take particular offense to being stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake. It seems that I share a few things in common with Vampires, which came in handy recently as I played through The Fury of Dracula from Fantasy Flight Games.

After a refreshing break in the wilds of Scotland the Polyhedron Collider crew get back together to discuss the board games they have been playing. We talk about Scythe yet again (well it is popular) and we take an in depth look at Fluxx, Multiuniversum, Vampire Hunters and Eldritch Horror.

We also give a shout out to the Brawling Brothers for supporting our show, and an argument about a brewery start some impromptu Sean Bean impressions.

Update: Arkham Horror: The Card Game has been released and you can read our review here.

Original Article: So it looks like our prediction and the leaked images where right – not
only are Fantasy Flight Games releasing another Living Card Game (LCG)
this year, it’s going to be Arkham Horror.

You’d think running a city would be a straightforward matter. How hard
can it be? Tell the people what to do and they’d go off and do it
without question. Sometime later the fruits of their labour would be
there for you…er…everyone to enjoy.

It seems that somewhere along the
way, somebody introduced knowledge and free will into the mix which has
thrown a nasty spanner into the works. And don’t get me started on
happiness – you’re here to work, not have fun. What do you think this
is? Disneyland? Get back to your jobs, plebeians.

I’m not a wine connoisseur. I used to serve the stuff when I worked as a waiter and I know the difference between red, white, rosé and sparkling, but that’s about as far as my expertise goes. Give me a single malt and I can probably tell you not only where it’s from and how old it is, but also which still it was made in and the name of the local village dog.

Wine on the other hand is another matter. Whenever I’m involved in a discussion about wine, I always remember the BBC programme “Food and Drink”, specifically Jilly Goolden. Every week she’d be spouting all kinds of nonsense like an unsecured fire hydrant, spraying everyone nearby with fragrant descriptions of whatever the “plonk-de-jour” was. Talk of noses, depth, length, chocolate notes and vanilla on the cusp. Almost like you were visiting a plastic surgeon who side-lined as a chocolatier about a proboscis adjustment.

Update 2: According to a tweet from Esdevium, Mansions of Madness Second Edition will be available in the UK on 4th August!

Update 1: As soon as I post my article Fantasy Flight Games post the official announcement with lots more details and images

Original Article: As I’m writing this there is no news on the Fantasy Flight Games website, but via YouTube the gaming company have announced a second edition of Mansion of Madness, and it’s rather different from the first.

The hordes of the undead and creatures of the night definitely go in and
out of popularity faster than global hyper colour t-shirts. It's seems
like only yesterday that Vampires where the undead du jour, there was a
brief spate of werewolf popularity, then non-threatening vampires and
now zombies are bloody everywhere, shambling about the place trying to
catch Pokémon.

Well it's seems about time that the modern day
vampire hunter makes its resurgence. It seems so long ago that I was
watching Buffy, Dracula 2000 and John Carpenter's Vampires, most of
which have not stood the test of time and so it's about time that the
concept of trained tooled up humans killing bloodthirsty creatures of
the night came back and that's just what Vampire Hunters is doing.